The Procession of Stars

You must wait here to be judged by those that measure time with the size of the stars. They’re waiting on the other side. But to be honest, Son, I don’t know if they’ll let you through. You see, the disease that is hatred can rarely be truly cured. And if you’ve been suffering from it for millions of years as you have, then there may be nothing they can do. They’re looking into it now: The incubation, the development, and the transmission. Hatred is contagious after all, and I fear that it may be entirely my fault.

The symbols that he had etched into the surface of the floor had lost all meaning. He ran his fingers into the grooves, tracing the shape of the letters that had been carved by his sword. A drop of lubricant fell onto the ground and seeped into the narrow channel.

“This will be the death of me,” the robot said to himself, his vocaliser straining from lack of maintenance. With a weary sweep of his right hand, he wiped away the lubricant and carried on. He was so close and to let anything distract him now would be folly.

The shrill bleep of his communicator parted the dust that hung in the room. The robot laid his sword down on the ground and slowly rose from his knees.

“Yes?” he asked.

“You’ve let us down again,” the voice said before terminating the connection.

“Damn!” he said, checking his chronometer. “Too late.” He coded the frequency of Iacon’s Olympius. “Hello,” he said, “Can I please talk to—”

“I am afraid you’re too late,” said the Operator.

“Please, this is important.”

“You know the rules. The athletes have a strict regime to—”

“Yes, I realise that, but I really need to talk to them.”

“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to try again in the morning.”

“But—”

“I will make a note that you called them.”

“Well make sure you note it down for both of them. Orion and Caeneus.”

The communicator clicked off and Xal brought his hand up to his forehead. Yet another opportunity to spend time with his two offspring had come and gone. He looked down at the translated symbols and wondered once again if his unyielding task was worth these sacrifices.

“Yes,” Xal told himself. They would understand—his two little stars—and he promised he would make it up to them.

With a grunt, Tow-Line hauled the battery pack onto the charger. He flipped upright into robot mode and adjusted the connections. There was a crack and then a hum and three green bulbs lit up on top of the battery. He didn’t notice Pitstop enter his workshop.

“What are you doing?” Pitstop said loudly, making Tow-Line jump.

“Juicing up the battery packs for the Auto-Assembly arms.”

“We have a meeting with Star Saber.”

“Oh,” said Tow-Line, pretending that he’d forgotten.

Pitstop rested a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Oh, come on. It’s not that bad.”

“You don’t like him. I don’t like him,” Tow-Line grumbled. “Why can’t be beam our reports to him?”

“We won’t be long,” reassured Pitstop. “Though I do think you’re weird that you’d rather spend time with batteries than with another Autobot.”

Tow-Line followed Pitstop out of the workshop. “At least batteries have a positive side,” he muttered.

Orion Pax stood with his arms relaxed beside his hips. His brother, Caeneus, stood opposite. They were in the centre of the near-empty amphitheatre, joined only by their trainer. A few spectators watched from the tiered seating. Xal was supposed to be there.

“Okay, we’re going to try something new,” Sunstreaker told them. “Something a bit more—” he paused, noticing himself in the reflective surface of Orion’s chest— “logical.”

Orion and Caeneus both nodded.

Sunstreaker approached Orion and flipped open a small panel on the left hand side of his head. “Let’s see how you handle some hand-to-hand without vision,” he said, flicking a tiny switch on a remote-control panel.

Orion’s optical receptors faded. He was blind now.

Sunstreaker flicked a few more switches. “And also magnetic, and electrical sensitivity, olfaction, and radio signal procession.” His finger hovered over a final switch. “The trick to this exercise is to train your logic centres to compute and predict the next move of your opponent.

“There’s that ‘bot over in Praxus who’s very good at this. Prowl, I think his name is. Anyway, switching audio off now, too.”

Orion leaned forwards slightly and bent his knees, ready for the fight. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear. He couldn’t sense the magnetic fields of his surroundings and he couldn’t smell the energon as it burned and vented from his brother’s body. There was no way at all to know what Caeneus was doing.

Except by pain, Orion quickly realised as he felt a blow to his shoulder. Orion blocked out the sensation and tried to calculate his brother’s next move. Too slow. Caeneus punched him again, this time in the abdomen. Using the data from the two attacks, Orion’s logic centres calculated a thousand possible moves and extrapolated. Caeneus spun around and moved to kick Orion in the chest. Orion successfully managed to block him this time. It was a clumsy, unfluid movement, but it blocked the attack nonetheless.

“Excellent,” said Sunstreaker.

Caeneus crouched down as Orion swung out with his left arms, missing him completely. He’s either in the air, or crouched down, Orion thought to himself. Orion jumped up into the air, having made the wrong decision. Caeneus chuckled to himself as Orion landed.

Orion stood still for a second and Caeneus moved behind him. As Caeneus made to punch him in the back of the head, Orion ducked.

“Play fair,” Sunstreaker warned Caeneus.

“He knew I was going to do that, anyway,” Caeneus sneered.

Orion spun around and hit Caeneus square in the chest, knocking him back.

Sunstreaker nodded his head and smiled. “Okay,” he said. “Swap places.”

As Sunstreaker restored Orion’s senses, and the basin of the amphitheatre returned to his field of vision, Orion looked up into the small group of spectators. He had hoped Xal would be there, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Xal was a simple creature. He had always seemed satisfied with his lot in life. He lived in Iacon, the largest of Cybertron’s cities. He spent his One-time performing his duties as a translator and his Zero-time with his two biomorphic offspring, teaching and mentoring them. But this latest project of his now took up all of his time, and he found himself now missing out as Orion and Caeneus developed into strong athletes.

He should have been proud of them, but he had become pre-occupied with something far more important: the Primal Pentateuch—the first five data tracks of the Creation Program. As Xal looked down onto the etched symbols on the floor of his workshop, he felt something cold and acidic dance into his armour. The symbols seemed to pulse and throb. Xal gripped his sword tightly and pointed it down to the words. They formed a lattice, or a network; like some kind of matrix.

Xal knelt down and pressed his palm flat onto the ground. He was captivated by the symbols. This simple creature—a robot—had forsaken all that used to make him happy in life. He had been seduced by the words. They spoke of great power. No, they were somehow imbued with power. No. They were power.

As his obsession with translating the Primal Pentateuch grew ever stronger, Xal felt himself hungry for such power. He didn’t like it, but he welcomed it anyway.

“He’s not home.”

“Surprise, surprise.”

Caeneus and Orion entered their hab-unit. It was sparse and contained only three Chargepods, and nothing else. The Cybertronians were required to spend their zero-time inside the pods, charging their fuel cells, and downloading data; nothing more, nothing less.

Orion obediently entered his Chargepod and nodded to his brother as the steel, reflective door slid down, encasing him inside. Caeneus was not so obedient and walked towards the third Chargepod; the one that belonged to Xal.

“What’s got you so preoccupied, I wonder?” Caeneus asked aloud.

He flattened his palm over the door. It was cold to the touch and clearly unused for the last few cycles. He moved his palm across the surface in an arc and stepped close up to the pod. Caeneus twitched as he noticed Orion’s pod hum into life. A green light emanated from the seals of the door. Caeneus returned his attention to Xal’s pod. He thought for a moment about opening it (a forbidden action). The files that would have been uploaded from Xal’s memory banks would surely contain information about the secret project that he’d been working so exclusively on.

To hell with the rules, thought Caeneus as he raised his hand to open the pod.

Xal entered the hab-unit. “What are you doing?”

Caeneus was startled and turned to see Xal striding purposefully towards him. Beads of lubricant were falling down Xal’s face. “Get away from that pod!”

“I was just—”

Xal grabbed Caeneus’ arm and wrenched it away from the pod. The pain registered across his receptors. “No one accesses that pod, do you understand?” Xal seethed. “No one.”

Caeneus shook himself free from the tight grip and stepped backwards. “Okay, okay.”

Xal raised him arm and Caeneus stepped further back, expecting his elder to strike him. Xal put his hand to his forehead. “I’m sorry,” he apologised. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay,” Caeneus said, his voice a little cool. “I understand.”

Caeneus opened his own pod and quickly entered and closed the door behind him, not offering Xal any further acknowledgment.

As Caeneus’s pod hummed into life, Xal glanced around the hab-unit. He’d hardly seen his two stars lately and when he did finally catch up with them all he could do was berate one of them. As Xal eventually entered his own pod he promised himself once again that he would make it up to them.

Pitstop and Tow-Line stepped down into Praxus Square. Tow-Line removed a turbowrench from a storage compartment and began spinning it in his hand. “Well that was easier than I was expecting,” he told Pitstop.

“See? It’s like I’ve been saying,” Pitstop replied. “Star Saber hasn’t been seeming himself lately.”

“And no way to test out your theories since he outlawed mind scanning.”

“Quite,” Pitstop said, suddenly stopping in his tracks. “It just unnerves me, you know? He’s distracted. He’s up to something, I just know it.”

“Shame Chicane’s not around anymore, we could have put him on Saber surveillance.”

Pitstop turned to his friend and said: “Maybe that’s something we can do ourselves.”

“But we have our responsibilities.”

“True.”

Tow-Line had an idea. “Look, there are plenty of Autobots who owe me favours after all the energon treats I dish out. I’m sure at least one of them will do some stake-out for us.”

Pitstop smiled. “Good idea. Who do you have in mind?”

Okay, Son, the way it works is that once you enter the Matrix, you have three choices. The first is that you are processed on to the next stage. I guess that would be the equivalent of the EvoPeak that you have spent so much of your life focussed on. The majority of those that come here are sent onto the next Universe. The second option is that you are resparked and given another chance to live your life in the previous Universe again. This usually happens to the very young—those that haven’t yet experienced enough of life to be able to pass through. And the third… Well, the third very rarely occurs. The third option is absolute deletion: no going forwards, no going backwards, no going anywhere.

Shokaract stood at the head of the slab with his hand clasped over his wrist behind his back. A small cable connected Star Saber’s memory circuits to a small console. He bent forwards slightly, taking in the full view of Star Saber’s dead body. The Predacon remained there for a while, thinking to himself. Would-be world dominators shouldn’t be feeling lonely, but Shokaract couldn’t help it. He had left his Heralds behind and all radio contact was severed. He wanted no contact with any of them until the time came. Any contact that was detectable by the Autobots would seriously compromise the plan.

Shokaract would cripple the Autobots from the inside, using the remote-controlled Star Saber. And, after the pre-agreed timeframe, his Heralds and armies would arrive on the planet and simply take control. It was the simplest of plans, but with one flaw: Shokaract himself. The Predacon was having trouble emulating Star Saber, and the Autobots were becoming suspicious. It wasn’t a case of acting like Star Saber; he had to become Star Saber.

The key to being Star Saber was given to Shokaract in his last words. Star Saber hated, and all Shokaract had to do was hate as well.

“Why do you hate so much?” Shokaract whispered into Star Saber’s offline audio receptors.

Shokaract didn’t truly understand the concept of hatred. For him, domination was a joy. He loved crippling societies and overthrowing rulers. He revelled in massacring millions of innocents just to claim a planet in his name. And with each planet under his proverbial belt, Shokaract became even happier.

The Predacon tapped at the console that was attached to Star Saber. It had been processing millions of years worth of memfiles and had finally reached its terminus—or beginning, depending on your viewpoint. Shokaract pressed a button and the first memfile flooded the small screen.

A name that was unfamiliar to Shokaract flashed up: Caeneus.

Shokaract was crouched down on the floor of Star Saber’s office, hidden by the shadows. His remote-controlled puppet was giving an address to the Autobots in Praxus Square. Through the optics of Star Saber, Shokaract smiled at the Zen-like calmness of the Autobots’ faces. Truth be told, this was his most deliciously favourite aspect of world domination—the absolute naivety, the unknowing innocence of the society that was soon to be wiped out. Like the moments of the obliviousness laughter of innocent civilians before a nuclear attack or the smile and child-like sigh of a beautiful girl before being sexually violated—these would be the precious memories of Shokaract.

He checked himself and refocused from his fantasies back to controlling Star Saber. It was simple. Flawless. All he had to do was hate and that, Shokaract believed, was the key to Star Saber. Everything that Star Saber saw, Shokaract had to hate. Everything that Star Saber heard, Shokaract had to hate. And soon, everything that Shokaract saw and heard became hated, too. The disease had spread to its new host.

Shokaract heard a sound. It was a deep, sinister sound that had sneaked into the office and joined him in the shadows. Shokaract turned and craned his neck to hear it better. For a moment there was silence and then the sound of Shokaract himself as he shifted positions. He stilled himself and waited.

A burst of laughter made Shokaract jump. It sounded like poison and it absorbed into his synthetic skin. The cold sound forked inside his circuitry like lightning. As the laughter reached his head, Shokaract could feel himself twitching. His knuckles burned and tightened and his own claws dug into his palms. Oil seeped from the fresh wounds and splashed down to the floor.

Shokaract gasped and, working solely on instincts, threw the remote control across to the other side of the room. He looked down as his oily palms and narrowed his eyes in confusion.

Shokaract had been infected.

Zero-time had switched once again to One-time, but Xal was already hard at work. He was so close now to finally finishing his translation of the Primal Pentateuch. His hands were shaking with excitement as his placed his sword down into the last gap in the symbol lattice. Xal whispered something incoherent to himself and he began to carve the last symbol.

Xal was on his hands and knees, resting his weight with two hands on his sword, pressing the tip into the ground. He had finished the translation. And as he lifted his sword up, a brilliant flash of white-hot light engulfed him.

Xal’s consciousness was spread in an instant across the entire Universe. He was between the lips of two young humans as they experienced their first kiss. He was intermingled amongst the roots of the oldest Boru tree on the planet Aarhus. He was inside a droplet of liquid mercury in the seas of Mie. And in the next instant he was in the centre of Cybertron, face to face with Primus.

Xal stared up at the huge face. It made no movements, and he didn’t know if he should kneel or not. A voice spoke to him. It was a quiet and gentle tone, a young voice. It was a voice that told Xal of great powers, lifelong wars and a desolate future.

A bright blue orb appeared before Xal. He reached out to take it, but it moved away from him.

The voice spoke again. “Syntax error. Failure to connect to P.R.I.M—”

“It’s not for you,” a second voice interrupted. Xal turned away from the orb to see a bronze and silver demon-like robot step put from under Primus’s face. “But it is for him.”

The orb grew in size and mass and its form became humanoid. The light faded and left behind a dark red robot with broad, square shoulders. Xal recognised him immediately.

Orion arrived back at the hab-unit without Caeneus. He was worried that his brother was growing more obsessive about his training. Orion then thought of Xal’s preoccupation with his own work and chalked it up to something that probably ran in the guanxi.

“Anyone here?” Orion asked loudly as he entered the unit.

He was startled to find Xal sitting on the floor, outside his chargepod and staring very intently at Orion.

“What?” Orion asked. “What is it?”

Forget it. All of it: Everything that you know, or that you think you know. It’s what I had to do when I first arrived here. Every Transformer that arrives here has their own view of the Matrix—what they think is, what they think it does, and what they think it wants. Of all the billions of Sparks that pass through this gateway, not a single one has figured out what the Matrix is until they’ve arrived.

They all believe death to be the final act, the last lap around the circuit board. They are told time and time again that death is not absolute. It’s about returning to the beginning.

Well, not the beginning, a beginning. There are no such things as parallel Universes. If anyone ever tells you that they’re from a parallel Universe then they’re lying, or have been programmed into thinking they’re from one. The truth is that they have somehow skipped back to your Universe from a future serial Universe. As I said, it’s all about recycling. And for all its power and mysticism, the Matrix is merely a gateway to the next serial Universe. Really, it’s that simple. When you die in one Universe you either skip to the next one, are resparked to continue in that same Universe, or you are deleted.

Sometimes you can decide what happens. You can progress or go back, or sometimes you may choose to stay in the Matrix and wait for others. And sometimes they decide what happens to you, as it is in your case.

Will you progress, Star Saber? Or will you go back? Or will they wipe you out from all existence?

Orion sat alone inside the Temple of Knowledge. He was inside a small room, offset from the main building. He wasn’t supposed to have found out about his affinity with the Matrix. The plan was that he would simply take over the mantle from Sentinel Prime. He shouldn’t have known; Xal shouldn’t have told him.

That was the first mistake Xal had made that night.

“Why me?” Orion said to himself. The young robot picked idly at a scratch in his forearm. “What about my plans to become an athlete?”

Orion’s voice echoed around the room, and as the words bounced back onto his audio receptors he tried to make sense of what everything meant. An unseen power had taken the comfortable and linear nature of his life and tied a knot in it.

“I don’t want to be important. I don’t think I could handle the pressure,” Orion said. “I don’t want to live my life under the scrutiny of others, constantly checking myself to make sure I am living up to expectations.

“And why should I? All I want is a simple life, like Xal. I’m not greedy or power-hungry. I don’t seek attention or praise. I don’t want to be an idol or have a following. Why would I want that? Why would anyone?

“But I suppose whatever plans I had have been forsaken, and—”

The door of the room opened and a shadow appeared on the floor.

“Am I to become a slave to destiny?” Orion asked the figure that stood in the doorway.

“Come with me,” was the only reassurance given.

Caeneus entered his hab-unit, expecting Xal and Orion to be there. Orion had missed the training session.

“I don’t want to be held back on the programme because of your tardiness,” Caeneus called into the room.

There was no answer. The room was empty, but two of the three chargepods were illuminated with their doors open.

“Well you two must have left in a hurry,” Caeneus said to himself, stepping up to Xal’s pod. He knew he was forbidden to access anything within the pod, but Caeneus had always found such rules to be far too deliciously tempting to break.

Without another thought, Caeneus interfaced with the chargepod and accessed the forbidden files. After fourteen milliseconds, he had learned the truth about the Primal Pentateuch, the Matrix, P.R.I.M.U.S., and his brother.

It really was rather a lot of information to process in a heartbeat.

Shokaract peered into the optics of Star Saber’s dead body. The laughter had stopped and the Predacon had regained his composure. It was stupid, all in his mind. It was an irrational fear and Shokaract was embarrassed that he had succumbed to it. Maybe it was because he was feeling isolated and alone without his Heralds.

“I have nothing to fear from this dead metal,” Shokaract convinced himself. “And I don’t need Antagony or Cataclysm to tell me that.”

Shokaract raised his head and marched over to where he had thrown the remote control device. It didn’t take long to repair and soon Shokaract was back in control. The Predacon made himself comfortable and instructed Star Saber’s body to leave the room and head away from the Citadel.

Shokaract allowed himself to relax and immerse himself into being Star Saber again.

There was nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear, and nothing to—

There it was again! The sickening laughter—the voice of madness—crawled under Shokaract’s skin and gnawed into his flesh. The more that Shokaract tried to become Star Saber, the worse it got. It wasn’t Star Saber’s evil that was drilling into Shokaract’s mind, it was his hatred. It was a thousand lifetime’s of pure emotion and something that the Predacon was ill prepared for.

Shokaract was out of his league.

This is it, Son. They’ve made their decision.

Xal’s hatred had grown from two seeds of truth. One, after all the hard work and time and energy spent decrypting and translating the Primal Pentateuch he wasn’t the one that would be able to harness its power, and two, the one who was able was his own offspring—one of his precious stars. And now that precious star had been taken away from him.

The simple translator paced the midnight streets of Iacon in a vain attempt to come to terms with his twofold loss. He stopped a short distance away from the Great Dome where, no doubt Orion was inside right now being briefed on his unrequested destiny.

Xal’s head sunk forwards.

The was a quiet sound of metal against metal and Xal turned around to see his second little star standing in half-shadow behind him. “Caeneus!” Xal called into the thin night air. There was still hope left. Xal could start things over with Caeneus. At least he hadn’t left him.

Caeneus approached Xal in a slow and thoughtful manner. He was holding Xal’s sword.

“I always wondered what you did with this,” Caeneus said, sliding his fingers along the blade. “All those times you’d left me and Orion alone.”

“Do you like it?” Xal asked.

“Yes,” replied Caeneus. “I like it. In fact, I think I will keep it.”

Xal walked towards his offspring, opening his arms. “Of course!” he said with a smile. “It’s all yours. Anything you want that I have. I’m here to provide for you.”

“That was what you were supposed to have been doing,” Caeneus sneered, tightening his grip on the sword.

“I know, I know,” Xal said apologetically. “And I’m sorry.”

Catching him off-guard, Caeneus lunged forwards in a single, well-trained movement and pushed his newly acquired sword into Xal’s chest. “I’m afraid ‘sorry’ doesn’t cut it.”

Tow-Line huddled closer to Pitstop to get a better view of the portable communicator. “How’s our little friend doing?” he asked.

“He’s been following Star Saber’s movements since we left for our excursion to Earth.”

“Any unusual behaviour?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Pitstop said, turning to his friend. “It’s almost as if someone’s been flicking an on/off switch on Star Saber.”

Shokaract pressed his hands against the plexi-glass of the windows of Star Saber’s office. He was trying his best to fight the madness caused by the spread of his puppet’s hatred. The chilling laugher had once again subsided and the Predacon was left to rethink his situation.

He clenched his fists in frustration. He couldn’t risk any radio contact with his Heralds to let them know that the plan to remote control Star Saber while he disabled the Autobots’ defence systems had failed. For once, Shokaract had failed, and he didn’t like being a failure one little bit.

Attempting to regain control of Star Saber’s dead body was no longer an option. Shokaract would not allow himself to forsake his domination plans by falling prey to shared madness. His only other option was to allow the Autobots to find Star Saber dead. The resulting chaos would surely provide enough cover (for the time being at least) to allow Shokaract to continue his plans.

A decision was made and Shokaract destroyed the remote control device, oblivious to the fact that there could be an Autobot out there with the same lust for supremacy as him.

A thick rivulet of oil ran from Xal’s chest, along the blade of his sword and into the grip of Caeneus. The young Autobot enjoyed briefly the sensation as the warm fluid slipped in between his fingers.

“What life do I have to look forward to now?” Caeneus asked Xal.

“I don’t understand,” Xal said, pushing through the pain. “You have everything ahead of you.”

“Thanks to you, I have nothing! Everything I do from now on, everything I achieve and every goal I reach will be eclipsed by him.”

“Who?”

“Orion—my brother.” The very word was emitted from Caeneus’ vocaliser as if it was the most disgusting obscenity of all time. “And it’s all your fault.”

“I had no idea,” Xal pleaded. “We have no choice over who we birth, or what they will become.”

“Well you certainly weren’t around to see what either of us were growing into.”

Caeneus pulled the sword from Xal and held the blade up to his face. “I came out here tonight to kill him, but they’ve taken him haven’t they? To places I could never dream of, I should think. He will ascend to whatever heights fate has planned for him…” Caeneus paused to throw a pitiful glance at Xal. “While I get left behind as the brother that was ignored by destiny.”

“That’s not true,” Xal said. “You are still special. You are one of my stars.”

“No,” said Caeneus, holding his sword tightly. “I will be my own star.”

And with an unmistakeable air of hatred around him, Caeneus walked away from Xal, leaving him to die.

Star Saber waited inside the Matrix while judgment was passed. There were as many Matrices as there were serial Universes, each a gateway between one and the next. Each serial Universe was a readjusted repeat of the last, with some greater power deciding which lives would be processed in order to finally get it right.

Star Saber wondered if he would be part of the procession, part of the elite that would end up in the final serial Universe and possibly beyond. Or would he be forced to go back? Or would be deleted completely, neither allowed to progress or regress?

The Autobot that Pitstop and Tow-Line had asked to follow Star Saber regarded the motionless robot with interest. Star Saber’s body was still and silent and the Autobot had waited patiently for any signs of life. There were none.

After a lengthy examination, the Autobot noticed the receiver tucked away at the back of Star Saber’s neck that Shokaract had been using to remote control him. A thought flashed into the Autobots mind and there and then he decided to make Star Saber his own puppet.

Just to see how things would turn out.